Ham Radio and Jeeping in Arizona

I have been too busy working to manage the blog, hope to get back to it soon.

Check out Scotty in NV.
He streams video from Ustream when on HF.
59 on 40M tonight!

Hide your AR?

I saw this on Yahoo News. Now anyone can walk down the street with an AR15 or similar “Assault Rifle” under their trench coat. Just like the Matrix. Shootouts in the streets will surely follow. Give me a break. I love how the liberal media is spinning this. How about a picture of Grandma with a nice .380 in her purse? That’s what I am talking about.  

However, I do not really agree with this new law.  I do believe that any American citizen should be able to carry, open or concealed. But…with some type of training.  Something other than TV. Did you know that on TV a Glock has a thumb hammer and an AR will hold 800 pounds in a single mag! I hope you get my point. 

The bottom line. I think this is a play to outlaw guns all together by the powers that be. There will be misuse and accidental discharges by the untrained. (It even happens to the well trained sometimes.) People will get killed and all to the tune of, “See, these guns are not safe! Ban em!” from the Left. Maybe I am paranoid? Anyway, I did not mean to post political opinions on my blog but this one really got me thinking. Ok, gotta go get more tin foil for my hat! 

Today I went southwest of town and threw a dipole up in a saguro cactus and made some contacts. I used the Icom IC-7000 at 1oo watts and a 100ah SLA battery to a multiband dipole up about 12 feet. Being 1000 feet above the desert floor against the northeast facing side of the hill really helped my signal get out. The Virgin Islands, and Caribbean as well as 22 states in about 2 hours. Mostly 59 reports and I had quite a little pile up there for a while. Thanks to all you guys and gal, who worked me Catcus Portable. I will surely do it again soon. 73

Another Ragnar Relay is in the books. It was colder up there than last year but the rain held off. The runners seemed to have better costumes this year and so did some of the hams!  Kudos to Brad, Virgil and Marcia for the great hot breakfast! Our prayers go out the family of the runner involved in an accident.
Sorry I did not get pictures from all the exchanges.

Not just any Tom, W5TOM Tom. He told me of contacts using a 9 volt battery. Pretty Cool!  He is a super nice guy and his website is outragous! He must have spent many hours on it and it is well worthy of a look.

I talked to Carl, KB7BIE with his 40 meter ham stick and 100 watts! He was doing a great job.

I had the pleasure of working Doug, N0AGE in Iowa last night. He was running 1500 watts with a IC7700. He was solid 10 over 9 most of the time. The contact before him was another op named Doug in Iowa as well, KC0ZNK…what are the odds of that? LOL
Gotta love Ham Radio!

What a beautiful rig!

I worked some guys in Kansas on 20 tonight. They were training new hams and working storm spotters. The station below is N0OY. I would say that is a pretty good classroom! Hope to work you again Pete and Tanner.